SonyLIV's 'Real Kashmir Football Club' has earned a nomination for Drama Series at the 54th International Emmy Awards, bringing global attention to a story rooted in the rise of Real Kashmir FC. Inspired by the club's founders and their mission to build hope through football, the series offers a rare portrayal of Kashmir beyond headlines of conflict, highlighting ambition, community, and the transformative power of sport.
When most of India and the world thinks of Kashmir, the images are usually borrowed from the news cycle. Images of curfews, conflict, and grief. Rarely do we think of a football pitch on a winter afternoon, or of a group of young men chasing a dream. That is what makes 'Real Kashmir Football Club' so novel.
The eight-part SonyLIV series, which premiered in December 2025, is directed by Mahesh Mathai and Rajesh Mapuskar. It stars Manav Kaul and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub as a journalist, Sohail, and a businessman, Shishir, who team up to build a professional football club in Jammu and Kashmir. Even though their story is fictionalised, the roots of Real Kashmir FC are very real.
The show draws on the journey of Real Kashmir FC, a club that grew out of a grassroots effort after the devastating floods of 2014 and was formalised in 2016. Its founders, the late Sandeep Chattoo and Shamim Meraj, are the real-life figures behind the show's central characters. The club's rise was remarkable. In the 2017-18 season, Real Kashmir went unbeaten in the I-League 2nd Division and won promotion, becoming the first club from Jammu and Kashmir to play in India's top flight. They finished third in their debut season.
Now the show has earned a nomination for Drama Series at the 54th International Emmy Awards, announced on September 23. The ceremony takes place in New York on November 23. For an independently financed Indian series up against productions with far larger budgets, the nomination is a victory in itself. Mathai's earlier show, 'Delhi Crime', won in the same category in 2020.
The nomination and the story the show is telling matters because of how rarely Kashmir gets to tell its own stories. The region is so often flattened into a single narrative as a sad, desolate place that exists mostly as a backdrop for political debate. Behind that framing are people who fall in love, argue over tactics, chase their goals, and crack jokes. They are ordinary and ambitious, and far more than a snapshot on the evening news.
Shows like this push back on the constant flattening of the region without ignoring its troubles. While acknowledging them, they insist that hardship is not the whole picture. Football becomes a way to see Kashmir as its people live it, with hope and humour alongside the hard days. Whether or not the Emmy comes home in November, the nomination has already asked the world to look at Kashmir longer and more closely than the headlines ever do.
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